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Old 11-18-2014, 12:21 PM
  #13
Graelix
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Joined: Nov 2014
Posts: 2
Why Doesn't Manny Already Know Spanish?

Let me first say I am a big fan of the show and am in no way trolling with my question. I think the writing, acting, chemistry etc are all first rate which is little short of a miracle considering how young many of the performers were and still are.

But Manny not knowing Spanish is driving me nuts!!

It is precisely because I so respect the writing, the believability of the characters and their wonderfully intricate back-stories that I am so upset about this detail. Perhaps I missed something. I am not sure I saw the original seasons and may lack a critical piece of information. Here is how I understand the time-line of Manny's early years.

He was born in South America to South American parents. His Father deserted them or the couple divorced or both. In any case his mother, Sophia, brought him to the USA, perhaps as a small infant, where she worked at low-paying jobs. One of those, which made up the bulk of the years prior to meeting Jay, was in a poor, predominantly SPANISH neighborhood as a hair-dresser. She would have been speaking Spanish all day long. She STILL struggles with English so it is inconceivable to me that she would not have spoken to him in Spanish as a baby and toddler, at least SOME of the time. The neighborhood he grew up in would have been filled with spanish speaking people, at least the older ones. I get that she would have made an effort to speak English to him so he would assimilate and I get that he would not have an accent as he would have learned English at school well before puberty, but I don't get how he is not fluent in Spanish. At the very least he should have been surrounded by enough it as a child that "picking it up" would be easy to him at fourteen. Gloria even pointed to this in the episode saying "What could be more natural than your Mother's tongue in your ear". Mother Tongue, which she was going for, refers to your FIRST, primary language that you learned from your Mother.

I have known children of immigrants. Every one of them had at least a workable understanding of their parents' language. Those immigrant parents who struggled with English did so precisely because they were living in a neighborhood where they could spend most of their time speaking their native language and only had to switch to English when dealing with those native to their adopted country.

This doesn't even take into account the unusually strong bond between Manny and Sophia. For years it was just the two of them against the world. Isn't he curious to hear what's really on her mind? He's served as her primary interpreter all six seasons and he's doing it by "intuition"? Telepathy?
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